Using dramatic recreations, expert testimonies and the diaries and letters of key players ranging from Robespierre to Wellington and Burke to Napoleon, the series vividly brings to life the crucial 26-year period, stretching from the outbreak of the French revolution in 1789 to the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when Europe was turned on its head.

Great empires were created and destroyed and the unprecedented scale and ferocity of the conflict brought new ideas and forces into play: liberty, equality, nationalism, industrialisation and the birth of the working classes. In the period that is the focus of this series, France’s pretensions to global dominance were crushed, Britain became a world superpower, and the ideas that were to dominate the modern world emerged.

How did a ramshackle British army triumph over the greatest fighting force since Roman times? Under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, the greatest General of his age, France established a mighty empire. Yet the British were launched on a painful learning curve and eventually by 1815 they had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.